STOP DIGGING UP THE SEED

When you walk into a restaurant and order your food, imagine if the second the waitress finished taking your order and took two steps away, you asked:

“Hey, is that steak done yet?”

What kind of look do you think you’d get?

She’d probably be completely confused.

They haven’t even put your order in yet.

Now imagine you waited five minutes and then walked into the kitchen to ask the cook if your food was done.

Everyone would be furious.

They’d very politely, I’m sure, tell you to fuck off and remind you that they have other orders to finish before yours.

It’ll be done soon.

Imagine planting some tomato seeds in your garden and then, five minutes later, digging them up to see if they had sprouted yet.

Then imagine doing that every day.

They’re never going to grow.

You keep digging them up.

Or imagine taking your car to a mechanic because it’s making a weird sound. Ten minutes after you get there, you walk into the back and ask if they’ve figured it out yet and how much it’s going to cost.

They probably haven’t even had enough time to diagnose the problem.

Keep doing that and they’re probably going to tell you to take your car somewhere else.

Or imagine you want to increase your income from $50,000 to $150,000.

You make your first sales.

Then you check your bank account the next day and get frustrated because you’re still nowhere near $150,000.

You get the point yet, or do you need a few more examples?

You keep planting a seed of desire and then you don’t give it enough time to grow.

I see this all the time in fitness.

Give the Program Time to Work

Sometimes it’s someone starting a new training program.

Two weeks later, they’re already convinced they found a better program that’s going to give them faster gains.

That’s shiny-object syndrome.

You need to resist it.

Give the program enough time to actually do what it was designed to do.

Were you clear on your goal?

Was the program supposed to increase your bench press by 50 pounds?

Probably not in two weeks.

Finish the program and test your new max.

Was the goal to increase your conditioning and the program calls for eight weeks?

Don’t get frustrated because things still feel really hard in week two.

Look at the data.

Are you recovering better?

Are you performing more work?

Are you getting through the sessions more effectively?

Are you improving?

Give the process the amount of time it was supposed to take.

That doesn’t mean blindly follow a bad program forever.

It means you need to give yourself enough time to determine whether something is actually working before you decide it isn’t.

That’s an important distinction.

Trust the process—but keep your eyes open.

Stop Checking the Scale Every Five Minutes

Another one I see all the time is weighing yourself after two or three days of a new diet and getting frustrated because the scale didn’t move in the direction you wanted.

First, you may still be learning how to track your food.

You may be learning the process.

You may be figuring out portions, meal timing, consistency, and how to actually execute the plan in your real life.

That takes practice.

And your body isn’t a vending machine.

You don’t put the right inputs in on Monday and automatically get the desired output on Tuesday.

Give it some time.

Then look at the data.

If the formula needs to be tweaked, tweak it.

Use the data to edit the process—not as an excuse to quit.

The scale isn’t your enemy.

Neither is a bad weigh-in.

It’s information.

Your Body Doesn’t Change Overnight

Do you check the mirror the day after you start working out and get frustrated because you don’t look different?

Guess what.

You can do the single best workout in the history of the world and you aren’t going to look dramatically different the next day.

You might have a pump.

You might feel different.

But you’re not going to build a completely different body in 24 hours.

Your body needs time.

And there’s another problem:

You see yourself every day.

The changes happen so gradually that you may not notice them.

Think about when you see someone you haven’t seen in six months and suddenly think:

“Holy shit. You look different.”

That’s how other people may see you.

They may notice changes before you do because they aren’t looking at you every single day.

That’s why taking progress pictures can be useful.

Instead of randomly checking the mirror and asking, “Do I look different yet?”, you can actually compare where you were to where you are.

You can analyze the data.

Again:

Stop digging up the seed.

Give it time to grow.

It’s like trying to do a U-turn with a cruise ship.

You can turn the wheel, but the ship isn’t going to instantly change direction.

There’s a lot of stuff happening underneath the surface.

Maybe the Problem Isn’t the Seed

Now here’s where the analogy gets even more important.

Sometimes the problem isn’t that you’re digging up the seed too soon.

Sometimes you planted the seed in bad soil.

Maybe it isn’t getting enough water.

Maybe you’re drowning it.

Maybe it isn’t getting enough sunlight.

Maybe some critter is eating it every night and you haven’t noticed.

The same thing happens with fitness.

Someone says:

“I want abs.”

Two weeks later they’re frustrated because they don’t have the finished product.

Okay.

But let’s look at the garden.

Are you actually doing the things necessary to get there?

Are your nutrition habits consistent?

Are you training?

Are you recovering?

Are you sleeping?

Are you tracking what matters?

Do you actually understand what the goal requires?

Did you choose a realistic timeline?

Are there things you’re doing every weekend that are completely undermining what you’re doing during the week?

Sometimes the seed isn’t growing because it needs more time.

Sometimes the environment needs to change.

Patience doesn’t mean ignoring the data.

You still have to take care of the garden.

The Same Thing Happens in Your Head

This doesn’t only happen with your body.

It happens with your mind.

You might tell yourself:

“I’m going to work on not reacting so quickly.”

Then someone cuts you off in traffic.

You flip your lid.

And immediately you think:

Well, fuck this.

I guess I’m never going to change.

This doesn’t work.

This is just who I am.

Congratulations.

You just dug up your seed and declared it dead.

You practiced a new behavior once, failed to execute it perfectly, and decided the entire process wasn’t working.

That’s not how this works.

The next time someone cuts you off, that’s another opportunity to practice.

Maybe you catch yourself five seconds sooner.

Maybe you don’t yell.

Maybe you still get pissed off but recover faster.

Maybe you notice the thought before you act on it.

Those are changes.

You have to give yourself enough repetitions to build the new skill.

That’s where practice comes in.

That’s where discipline comes in.

That’s where keeping your word comes in.

And yes, you should have some grace with yourself when you screw up.

But grace doesn’t mean letting yourself off the hook.

If you keep making the same mistake over and over, you need to look at it honestly.

Don’t beat yourself up—but don’t bullshit yourself either.

Don’t Plant a Seed You Can’t Take Care Of

There’s another way people sabotage themselves.

They make the goal way too big.

“I’m not going to drink for 90 days.”

“I’m going to eat perfectly for 90 days with zero misses.”

“I’m going to work out twice a day for the next two months.”

Maybe that’s a legitimate goal for someone with the skills and experience to execute it.

But if you haven’t built any skills around keeping promises to yourself, you’re choosing one of the most difficult seeds to grow.

That’s a problem.

If you’re brand new to gardening, maybe don’t start with the most exotic plant you’ve ever seen.

Learn how to take care of something first.

Start smaller.

Get some wins.

Build the skills.

Build the habits.

Learn what works for you.

Then you can plant something bigger.

This doesn’t mean you should think small forever.

Quite the opposite.

It means you can eventually plant much bigger seeds because you’ve become better at taking care of them.

The Goal Isn’t Just the Plant

This might be the most important part of the entire idea.

Imagine someone wants to become a professional athlete.

They plant that seed when they’re a kid.

Then they spend years practicing.

They build skills.

They develop habits.

They learn discipline.

They learn how to deal with failure.

They learn how to recover from mistakes.

They learn how to perform when they’re tired.

They learn how to deal with pressure.

They keep watering the plant.

And they don’t check every week when they’re 16 and say:

“Damn. I’m not a professional baseball player yet. I guess this isn’t working.”

They keep working.

They keep learning.

They keep trusting the process.

And let’s be clear about something:

Sometimes the seed doesn’t grow into exactly what you wanted.

Maybe that kid doesn’t become a professional athlete.

Maybe they give it everything they have and still don’t make it.

That doesn’t mean the years were wasted.

They spent those years building skills, habits, discipline, resilience, confidence, and the ability to work toward something difficult.

They became more capable.

And those skills can be applied to the next seed.

That’s the point.

Plant the Seed. Tend the Garden. Stop Digging It Up.

Your goal doesn’t have to be becoming a professional athlete.

Your seed could be getting to the gym once a week.

It could be losing 20 pounds over the next year.

It could be learning to control your reactions.

It could be becoming more disciplined.

It could be building a business.

It could be improving your relationships.

It could be becoming someone you trust.

Whatever it is, the process is remarkably similar.

Set a clear goal.

Understand what the goal actually requires.

Set yourself up for success.

Don’t take on more than you’re capable of handling right now.

Plant the seed.

Keep your word.

Practice the habits.

Collect the data.

Edit the process when necessary.

Be disciplined.

Be patient.

Give yourself some grace when you mess up.

And then get back to work.

Don’t dig the seed up every three days because you don’t see a tomato yet.

And don’t be so patient that you refuse to admit you’re watering the wrong plant.

You need both.

Patience and honesty.

Trust and evidence.

Discipline and adaptability.

That’s how the seed grows.

And the better you get at taking care of one seed, the more capable you become of planting another.

Eventually, you can start planting bigger seeds.

More ambitious seeds.

Maybe even some completely fucking ridiculous seeds that the old version of you never would have believed were possible.

Because now you have evidence.

You’ve done this before.

You know how to work.

You know how to adapt.

You know how to get back on track.

You know how to weather the storm when things don’t go perfectly.

You know how to nurture something over time.

You’ve learned how to grow.

So plant the seed.

Take care of it.

Be honest about the work.

And then—

for fuck’s sake—stop digging it up.